Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in fact,
Speaker 1: we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
Speaker 1: women at the top of their fields about their personal journeys,
Speaker 1: the progress women have made, and how far we still
Speaker 1: have to go. Today, we're looking at women in the
Speaker 1: tech industry with Kara Swisher, a fierce reporter who has
Speaker 1: been decades chronicling the tech industry, its successes, its failures.
Speaker 1: It's blind spots all well, being clear and blunt about
Speaker 1: what she thinks the responsibilities of the industry and its
Speaker 1: leaders are well here that by numbers alone, the tech
Speaker 1: industry looks like and often is, a man's world. Women
Speaker 1: hold roughly of leadership positions in tech companies, and the
Speaker 1: percentage of women earning computer science degrees is about half
Speaker 1: of what it was. So we're arguably losing ground in
Speaker 1: the fight for an equitable future for women in the
Speaker 1: tech industry. And then they're funding. Last year was a
Speaker 1: record breaking year in terms of interricopital funding, and yet
Speaker 1: women only led startups received just two percent of total
Speaker 1: investment dollars, the lowest share since And when you look
Speaker 1: at women teamed up with men, the percentage jumps to
Speaker 1: fifteen point six percent. Still, that means that more than
Speaker 1: eighty percent of funding went to all male teams, and
Speaker 1: of course numbers don't tell the full story. There's the
Speaker 1: lived experience of being one of the few women in
Speaker 1: a male dominated field. The sexism, the man splaining, the exclusion,
Speaker 1: the harassment, the feeling and the knowledge that your ideas
Speaker 1: aren't being taken seriously, and the pressure of feeling like
Speaker 1: you're representing an entire gender. That said, there are certainly
Speaker 1: bright spots female founders, investors, inventors, engineers, and CEOs, including
Speaker 1: Chard Dubai, the CEO of the Match Group, a dating
Speaker 1: and tech company, who will hear from later this season.
Speaker 1: Kara Swisher has probably talked to more tech leaders, over
Speaker 1: more time and more places than well anyone. She's been
Speaker 1: described as the most feared and well liked journalist in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Among her many accomplishments, she was a reporter
Speaker 1: for The Washington Post in the Wall Street Journal, and
Speaker 1: she co founded the tech news website Recode. She now
Speaker 1: co hosts the podcast Pivot for Vox Media, and she
Speaker 1: writes an opinion column and hosts the podcast Sway for
Speaker 1: the New York Times. So just before I ask any questions,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: And I hope since this is Women's History Month, we
Speaker 1: could start with a little bit of your history. I
Speaker 1: don't think that many people listening may know that you
Speaker 1: didn't first start off as a kind of internet or
Speaker 1: tech reporter. No, well, there wasn't the Internet. I'm old.
Speaker 1: There wasn't the Internet. Yeah, so can you talk about
Speaker 1: like your first jobs in journalism, You're time at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, and then how you the decision to take
Speaker 1: this big leap into the future. Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: digital wasn't really existing. There were obviously computers had been introduced,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't widespread. It wasn't a consumer item really,
Speaker 1: it was just starting to become one. I had an
Speaker 1: Apple to see at college, and then there was the
Speaker 1: iMac at some point, but I had I hadn't been
Speaker 1: very technical at all, and I didn't have an office job.
Speaker 1: And where I started work, we didn't have typewriters. We
Speaker 1: had these large computers. I can't remember the system, but
Speaker 1: it was not the most consumer friendly experienced the way
Speaker 1: it is today. Then I worked at the City Paper,
Speaker 1: in Washington, which is a free paper. And then I
Speaker 1: got a job in the mail room at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: And I had been a stringer at the Washington Post
Speaker 1: in college to from Georgetown and it got me into
Speaker 1: Columbia Journalism School. So it was sort of this weird
Speaker 1: back and forth with the Post, but eventually I ended
Speaker 1: up the Post as a reporter, and I covered retail
Speaker 1: if you lived in which you did live in Washington.
Speaker 1: There was a half family track Auto Dark Drug. They
Speaker 1: owned a beverage thing, and they were a very famous
Speaker 1: retail family, and so I covered them and they were fighting,
Speaker 1: and I covered Heckender and Woodies and all these things
Speaker 1: that were just local retail essentially, but at the time
Speaker 1: it was under siege from a very technically literate company
Speaker 1: called Walmart, which was eating everybody's lunch because they used
Speaker 1: technology so definitely in terms of how to stock stores,
Speaker 1: and I was super interested in and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. And then I was going out with someone
Speaker 1: who lived in the former Soviet Union and I communicated
Speaker 1: over these Internet things and I was fascinated with it.
Speaker 1: So that was your first experience with the internet, was
Speaker 1: communicating with ding. Yeah, exactly, and it was very it
Speaker 1: was super hard to do. And then suddenly there was
Speaker 1: a lot of commercial stuff and they were all in
Speaker 1: Washington because one of the hubs of the Internet was
Speaker 1: in Washington. There's May East and May West. If tech
Speaker 1: people are so funny, and so May East was here.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly there were all these Internet connection companies.
Speaker 1: And when I was at the Post, I did a
Speaker 1: fellowship at Duke University and I started downloading books onto
Speaker 1: the system, and I was fascinated with it, and I
Speaker 1: messed it up once. Do you remember the first book
Speaker 1: you downloaded? Calvin and Hobbs Cartoon Collection because I wanted
Speaker 1: to see something visual, And the guy who was running
Speaker 1: the computer center, and I was mad at me because
Speaker 1: I did something wrong. They mucked up to say, you know,
Speaker 1: it would take time. Everybody couldn't be on at once.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like having one single spicket. And
Speaker 1: I kept saying, I downloaded a book into my computer.
Speaker 1: You believe that? And he's like, yeah, whatever, And I
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, no, this is really a big deal.
Speaker 1: And I kept sort of focusing on it, and I
Speaker 1: kept being really interested in At the Washington Post, we
Speaker 1: had a big cell phone, essentially a suitcase phone, but
Speaker 1: it was portable and you could take it with your car.
Speaker 1: I'm the only one who used it. Really, I felt
Speaker 1: like I was. We had these things, these k pros,
Speaker 1: these portable computers that we'd put couplers on a on
Speaker 1: a telephone and send stuff. And I was like, this
Speaker 1: can't be the end of it. So I started to
Speaker 1: get really more interested in that than the stories I
Speaker 1: was writing, and I kept talking about it, and David
Speaker 1: Ignatious was my editor at the time who's now writes
Speaker 1: about national security and other things. He was like, if
Speaker 1: you're so interested, you should write about it. And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay. And I there was a company called
Speaker 1: A O L And that was the first commercial consumer
Speaker 1: oriented company, and it was here in Washington because of
Speaker 1: the location close to May East. And I met Steve
Speaker 1: Case when he had a very small amount of people
Speaker 1: and was riveted instantly. I understood that it was a shift,
Speaker 1: a major shift in communications, just like the printing press
Speaker 1: or television or radio. And I had been a student
Speaker 1: of that, so it was like, Oh, this is going
Speaker 1: to change everything. And I was I think I saw
Speaker 1: it way before other people. And did you expect it
Speaker 1: to change your life too. Yes, I was totally interested
Speaker 1: in it. Being at the Washington Post, the big thing
Speaker 1: was to cover politics, and I was like, I'm not
Speaker 1: interested at all in politics, which was at Washington Post.
Speaker 1: It was like, what do you mean we want to
Speaker 1: give you this pollet. I was a good reporter, and
Speaker 1: they wanted me to move there, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I couldn't be less interested. So I said, I'll cover this,
Speaker 1: and I started covering a o well. And then it
Speaker 1: extended to Amazon, which was a very small company. Jeff
Speaker 1: showed me around this sort of crappy little space and
Speaker 1: and then I met the Yahoo guys and Mark Andres
Speaker 1: and he was very young who created the browser. And
Speaker 1: so I was riveted instantly because I think I understood
Speaker 1: what it would do to media. I was particularly obsessed
Speaker 1: with classified and about delivery and subscriptions and delivery of
Speaker 1: information and so so I had plenty to write about.
Speaker 1: And I just I have not gotten tired of it since.
Speaker 1: And Karen, listening to you recite the founders that you met,
Speaker 1: they're all men, Yes, indeed they were are Was that
Speaker 1: something you were aware of at the time. It's just
Speaker 1: like man after man generally white man after white man. Oh. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: something I talked about a lot, and I talked about
Speaker 1: it for years, and I believe it has to do
Speaker 1: with why we're having so many problems too. One time
Speaker 1: someone said, what do you think the real reason it's
Speaker 1: so much problematic around misinformation and safety? And this I said,
Speaker 1: because the people who created the modern internet never felt
Speaker 1: unsafe a day in their lives. They just weren't unsafe people.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't feel, if you have a
Speaker 1: lack of feeling about safety, you don't think about building
Speaker 1: it into a system. Right. I don't think it's cruel
Speaker 1: or maleve one. It's just it's not the way they think.
Speaker 1: You know, I have sons and they don't feel unsafe.
Speaker 1: They don't in America. They don't have things coming at
Speaker 1: them all the time. When they built these tools, they
Speaker 1: didn't think people would use them in a malevolent way necessarily,
Speaker 1: But once it started happening, they needed to do something
Speaker 1: about it, and Karat they still haven't. No, they haven't, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to get dragged into this. That's what
Speaker 1: you have to understand, is, you know, the the analogy
Speaker 1: I use is a city they've created a city and
Speaker 1: they don't care about the police. They don't want to
Speaker 1: give you firewater, you know, everything, stop signs, everything that
Speaker 1: makes a city, okay, like anything police, anything with standards,
Speaker 1: and they're like, we don't want to do that, but
Speaker 1: we're taking all the rent via information via data. But
Speaker 1: you know, you're on your own. They don't want to
Speaker 1: take responsibility and and they're also are unqualified to do so,
Speaker 1: and I think they sense that. So I definitely was
Speaker 1: struck by. It was me and a lot of men
Speaker 1: in a room essentially, and then the women that were there.
Speaker 1: There are some women technologist absolutely and very critical ones.
Speaker 1: There's several a Apple, for example, in other places that
Speaker 1: were there in the early days, but they kind of
Speaker 1: got flushed out. You know. It was an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to see. And often they were in positions of marketing.
Speaker 1: And as anyone who covers technos, if you're not in
Speaker 1: the tech part, you ain't no one, right, that's the part.
Speaker 1: You have to be a techie to have power in
Speaker 1: technology companies. That's always true in other companies for sure.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, stay with us, okay, I think
Speaker 1: about these different data points whenever this conversation comes up
Speaker 1: or admittedly when I catalyze it, which is that I
Speaker 1: got my first computer from Santa And how old are you?
Speaker 1: I was seven? Okay, Santa Claus brought me a computer.
Speaker 1: What was it? I was a commodore. What did you
Speaker 1: do on it? What did you actually do on it?
Speaker 1: I played math games, basically interesting because I was nerdy,
Speaker 1: and all right, that felt like a great way to
Speaker 1: be a nerd. And it was all though, that kind
Speaker 1: of weird pulsating green color. I remember when I got
Speaker 1: my next computer. I think when I was twelve, and
Speaker 1: there was color. Yeah, probably an apple, right, yep, I
Speaker 1: just like, this is amazing. But in seven more than
Speaker 1: a third of the computer science graduates in our country
Speaker 1: were women. And then when I went to Stanford in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, it was still about a quarter. And
Speaker 1: then when I became a parent seven half years ago,
Speaker 1: it was like, right, So we've seen this deterioration. And
Speaker 1: the deterioration also obscures the raw number challenge, because clearly
Speaker 1: the denominator has only grown from the mid nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: of computer science programs, and yet the percentage of women.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, why didn't you go into computers.
Speaker 1: If you were a math person, what happened? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think about that, characause I loved math. I was good
Speaker 1: at math. I had parents who were excited that I
Speaker 1: loved math, was good at man. My calculus teacher in
Speaker 1: high school, Mrs Goldman, was a woman and was like
Speaker 1: tough as nails but fair and made learning calculus fun.
Speaker 1: I always have been interested in math as a utility
Speaker 1: for public health and medicine and biology, and so it
Speaker 1: never even occurred to me like I didn't make an
Speaker 1: affirmative choice to not go into computer science, although I
Speaker 1: did make an affirmative choice to go to Stanford. I
Speaker 1: did have this sense in the late night the font
Speaker 1: of many of these places, many of these companies were
Speaker 1: all started so curious. I was like, what is happening
Speaker 1: in this place called Palo Alto, which from like d
Speaker 1: C felt like this like very far away land. But
Speaker 1: you didn't do it. We were in exactly the right
Speaker 1: place at the right time to move into that end,
Speaker 1: I know, And yet it didn't appeal to me. And
Speaker 1: then I wonder was I hard coded in ways that
Speaker 1: no pun intended like to still think that wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Something happens to girls. And this has
Speaker 1: been studied a lot at a certain age and it's
Speaker 1: probably just past ten years old. It's it's largely like
Speaker 1: early early middle school, yes, where it's they suddenly move
Speaker 1: away from it, and it's either because they don't feel
Speaker 1: but they belong, or that they're pushed that way, or
Speaker 1: that there's a stigma for being a geek that is
Speaker 1: way too much harder for women than men. But it's
Speaker 1: certainly apparent that something occurs. Now. Lots of women get through,
Speaker 1: for sure, and a lot of a lot of those
Speaker 1: women end up going into medicine or the sciences. You'll
Speaker 1: you don't find that as much in the sciences in
Speaker 1: all the difference. I mean, I teach at the School
Speaker 1: of Public Health that Columbian have many, you know, women
Speaker 1: colleagues who are epidemiologists, hardcore research scientists, economists, lots of everything,
Speaker 1: and so it's a really interesting thing. Is it then
Speaker 1: it's is it the atmosphere? Is it the you sort of?
Speaker 1: It's everything I think, And you know, Maria Clawe, who
Speaker 1: runs Harvey Mud, has a lot of interesting observations of
Speaker 1: why that is. And one of the things she told
Speaker 1: me once was that there's always one man who makes
Speaker 1: it impossible for a lot of people, one particular man
Speaker 1: in a computer us. It just really denigrates and insults
Speaker 1: and it just creates a really bad atmosphere. And it
Speaker 1: often not just women. It leaves out different people so
Speaker 1: that it tends to favor a certain kind of man.
Speaker 1: I wrote a piece once called the men and No
Speaker 1: Women of Facebook, and all I did was published their
Speaker 1: pictures and say, hey, this guy does this, and they
Speaker 1: got mad at me. I was like, I'm just putting
Speaker 1: that's your pictures of those people. And I did the
Speaker 1: same thing years later, which I found even more disturbing,
Speaker 1: which was the men and no Women of Internet company
Speaker 1: boards right Web two point o company boards. Now, in
Speaker 1: that case there's plenty of women qualified to go on boards,
Speaker 1: but still Twitter was a particular example of that, which
Speaker 1: was they had ten men of the same type. It was,
Speaker 1: it was the same type of person. And when I
Speaker 1: wrote this piece about them, I wrote, I think the
Speaker 1: single best lead I've ever written, and I should have
Speaker 1: retired right after which I said, on the board of Twitter,
Speaker 1: which has three peters in a dick, there are no
Speaker 1: women and half the usages by women and third of
Speaker 1: the usage by people of color. This kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and the CEO Di Costlo is very funny called man,
Speaker 1: He's like, that's a really funny lead. I'm like, I know,
Speaker 1: I made a penis joke. But he's like, that's unfair,
Speaker 1: because you know, we have standards. Started with that we
Speaker 1: have standards thing, And I'm like, you guys right now
Speaker 1: are in a terrible position. So how is it that
Speaker 1: you found ten men of the same type. It's mathematically
Speaker 1: impossible and I'm not even good at math to understand
Speaker 1: why how that happens, and all of them can't be qualified,
Speaker 1: and that you can't find qualified people. And so what
Speaker 1: I began to understand when I started to talk to
Speaker 1: a lot of tech people, they always use the word standards.
Speaker 1: They never apply it to people like themselves. They only
Speaker 1: apply it to women and people of color. The default
Speaker 1: is that people like themselves have already met the standards,
Speaker 1: whatever those standards are, whatever they are, And there are
Speaker 1: certain standards, absolutely, but there are interesting new ideas around
Speaker 1: blind hiring and all kinds of things, and it will
Speaker 1: be interesting to see what happens after the pandemic. Because
Speaker 1: people have been working at home, so it creates a
Speaker 1: very different environment, and tech particularly has been pushing the
Speaker 1: idea that you don't need to go in the office.
Speaker 1: I think that will be interesting to see what happens
Speaker 1: when that takes hold over a long period of time.
Speaker 1: And how do you think work from home in the
Speaker 1: tech industry has affected women or what have you observed?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, they can't
Speaker 1: create these little bro fests. And I hate to use
Speaker 1: that term, I try not to, but it really is
Speaker 1: that if there's just no other way around it, you
Speaker 1: create centers of comfort. Right, there's centers of comfort with
Speaker 1: people you're comfortable with whether they're going to go on
Speaker 1: ski trips or whatever they all do. But there's a
Speaker 1: culture around it where people either belong or don't belong.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't have those things, how do
Speaker 1: you create linkage? Is I don't know. You really can't
Speaker 1: grow it up on zoom. It can't be. It can't.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can, or maybe they will, but
Speaker 1: it's harder. I think it'll be an interesting because it
Speaker 1: will last in tech, It will certainly last. The people
Speaker 1: will be remote, they'll be living elsewhere, they'll be creating
Speaker 1: things in other communities and tech will lead the way
Speaker 1: on that for sure. It's it's interesting, like reflecting on
Speaker 1: the challenge of creating those sort of bro hubs on Zoom,
Speaker 1: I think it would expose how purposeful those kind of
Speaker 1: bro hubs often are. You can't pretend that it's just
Speaker 1: like incidental that you all happened to converge around the
Speaker 1: ping pong table or you all happen to have a
Speaker 1: beer after work together. Yes, yeah, it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see what happens, especially with remote work where people you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of Silom Valley people are moving out of
Speaker 1: Silm Valley right There really was a very tight culture there,
Speaker 1: and if it's not there from a social point of
Speaker 1: view and a business point of view, you wonder how
Speaker 1: things develop or how they fund things. That's where it
Speaker 1: all starts. As far as I'm concerned, is that the
Speaker 1: number of people that get funded women it's just dropped
Speaker 1: again quite considerably. And there's money everywhere. There's money everywhere.
Speaker 1: We're taking a quick break. Stay with us, since we've
Speaker 1: talked so much about the dearth of women in tech.
Speaker 1: And while you very much are a journalist, you are
Speaker 1: one of the most recognizable women in the tech conversation.
Speaker 1: Do you have young or maybe even not so young
Speaker 1: women who reach out to you for advice all the time.
Speaker 1: What questions do you get? One of the things they
Speaker 1: seem to be asking is will I suffer if I
Speaker 1: take a leap? I think a lot of especially a
Speaker 1: lot of women, tend to be nervous about changing because
Speaker 1: they have a certain achievement somewhere and they don't want
Speaker 1: to jump. The other thing they tend to do is
Speaker 1: take what's offered them rather than what they want to do.
Speaker 1: Men are very much more directed. I want to do this,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do this. I often say where
Speaker 1: would your ideal place to work? How would your workplace
Speaker 1: look like? What do you want to spend your days,
Speaker 1: your limited days on this planet doing? I always use
Speaker 1: that word so they get a sense of, you know,
Speaker 1: time as a chicken, and so I do find women
Speaker 1: are I wouldn't say more risk averse, but there's something
Speaker 1: that they don't think they can I don't whether it's
Speaker 1: a sense of responsibility. Obviously. Family questions come up a
Speaker 1: lot still with women. I mean the idea that we
Speaker 1: don't have universal childcare or universal treakare everything are agnomous.
Speaker 1: State is not having universal paid leave or universal paid
Speaker 1: early childhood education, and it's crazy. It's so bad for
Speaker 1: the economy, like all that stuff, And so I think
Speaker 1: women are still carry the burden of that more than men,
Speaker 1: very clearly, And that's no question. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: going to be interesting to see. I think the pandemics
Speaker 1: and the yield all kinds of interesting trends around the workplace,
Speaker 1: how people operate with each other at home and where
Speaker 1: you work from and how the hours you work. And
Speaker 1: I think some of it does favor more involvement by women.
Speaker 1: More flexibility creates more ability to achieve. I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Where do you think though will
Speaker 1: be in a decade or whatever the way quantum of
Speaker 1: time is in technology, I guess broadly, but also for women,
Speaker 1: do you think there will be more women in leadership position?
Speaker 1: Whether from a management perspective or a board perspective. And
Speaker 1: if the answer is not, how do we try to
Speaker 1: change that prognostication? Well, what's interesting is what's the technology
Speaker 1: going to be? Like what's happened is not what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. There's all this movement around cryptocurrency. Is quite
Speaker 1: a lot of women involved in cryptocurrency, which is more men,
Speaker 1: but a lot more women than you usually see some
Speaker 1: of them. So a lot more women than say like
Speaker 1: web two point now, yes, a dent there, but not
Speaker 1: a lot, but more for sure. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: women in robotics, which I think is a big area,
Speaker 1: a lot more women like significantly not an AI though
Speaker 1: for AI as man man man man man, which is
Speaker 1: which is critically important. There's a lot more women involved in,
Speaker 1: you know, all the mechanical engineering stuff, which I think
Speaker 1: will be interesting. Food is another area of food innovation.
Speaker 1: You might see climate change. There's all kinds of really
Speaker 1: interesting climate change companies, and I do run into more
Speaker 1: women in those. I call it chimate change tech. But
Speaker 1: there's whether it's carbon capture, food or water one of
Speaker 1: the two people that did the m RNA vaccine for
Speaker 1: fives or a lot of women. And of course that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of stuff is going to focus in
Speaker 1: on in the future, is health and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would hope that there's lots more opportunities
Speaker 1: as it spreads out. That said, cars mostly men like
Speaker 1: autonomous cars, and space. It's a guy thing, as you
Speaker 1: know from Jeff Bezos is Rocket, but in the big
Speaker 1: areas AI and autonomous transportation, men everywhere you look. And
Speaker 1: as technology moves from just tech only to every company
Speaker 1: is a tech company. It's an opportunity, I would guess.
Speaker 1: So the question is where does it go, who makes
Speaker 1: the investments, who gets funded? And so whether it's cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: or a new media stuff or almost anything, it's hard
Speaker 1: to find women leaders. Yes, and so Kara, is that
Speaker 1: a pipeline challenge? Is that an investment challenge? Is that
Speaker 1: a platform slash like amplification and challenge? And how do
Speaker 1: we try to accelerate? It's an investment challenge because if
Speaker 1: you don't have women at the beginning, if they're not
Speaker 1: if you're not a founder, if you're not on the
Speaker 1: cap table, that really is it. And then you have
Speaker 1: some women who now have a lot of money, like
Speaker 1: Mackenzie Bezos or Melinda Gates. Melinda is making a ton
Speaker 1: of investments via her firm, which is called Pivotal Ventures
Speaker 1: in Women Backed Enterprises. She's specific and she feels like
Speaker 1: it's an economic opportunity for her, and it's not charity
Speaker 1: it's not trying to be you know, woke or whatever.
Speaker 1: She's doing it because she thinks it's missed opportunity by
Speaker 1: a lot of men. And she's investing a lot in
Speaker 1: the childcare economy, right she is. Why not because we
Speaker 1: all need it, so hopefully for those of us that
Speaker 1: are our parents who have little girls with big dreams,
Speaker 1: we can try to at least insert that possibility. You
Speaker 1: have girls, right, I do have a girl and two boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I just had a daughter and she's too
Speaker 1: and she's so confident. And it's really interesting because these
Speaker 1: boys and they're very confident of themselves and I she's
Speaker 1: so confident, and I'm wondering. I'm sort of waiting for
Speaker 1: that moment where something happens, and I'm paying a lot
Speaker 1: of attention to it because I did see that moment
Speaker 1: with my boys. They grew up in San Francisco. One
Speaker 1: of my kids loved the color pink, and he had
Speaker 1: a pink hat he work forever. Loved it, and then
Speaker 1: he got a message somewhere that he shouldn't like pink.
Speaker 1: I don't know where it was, but he definitely started
Speaker 1: to get these gender things. And I was like, how
Speaker 1: did that happen? It is what it is. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't like doing the whole feminist rain dance around it
Speaker 1: running like that, but I was sort of riveted. And and
Speaker 1: and so when you have a girl, you have to
Speaker 1: wonder what is her like. She's very mechanical, Like you
Speaker 1: can tell she looks how things are made, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: will she go that way or will she think she
Speaker 1: should be in the soft you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Not not? I don't know. Is it going to be
Speaker 1: interesting to say for sure? Well, Kara, the last question
Speaker 1: I want to ask is just also about like other
Speaker 1: women covering tech, like how do you see your journalistic colleagues.
Speaker 1: Do you see challenges that younger women have covering tech
Speaker 1: or they also able? Is the way you clearly have
Speaker 1: been able to puncture through the bro like culture. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of probably more men covering tech than women,
Speaker 1: but some of the really top level ones are all women,
Speaker 1: whether it's Nicole pearl Roth who covers cyber technology, tailor
Speaker 1: Lawrence who covers internet culture. She's amazing, Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: has certainly had to deal with some of the ugliest
Speaker 1: parts of the Internet. Those assholes. It's interesting they never
Speaker 1: come from at me. They come at her, and I
Speaker 1: was always interested in that, Like, what do you think
Speaker 1: that's about? They're frightened of me and they don't feel
Speaker 1: like they're frightening, But I love them to come at me.
Speaker 1: Come will come on down. Boys, Let's see what happens
Speaker 1: in that fight. But also Jessica Lesson, she has the information,
Speaker 1: which is great. She started her own company and she's
Speaker 1: really does an amazing job. There's a lot of women
Speaker 1: in prominent roles in technology coverage. Zephanie Rule very great
Speaker 1: business reporter, but covers a lot of tech. There's quite
Speaker 1: a few, and they're in positions of authority and just
Speaker 1: really killing it all over the place. That's great to hear.
Speaker 1: Is there one statistic or fact about women in tech
Speaker 1: that gives you hope to end on an optimistic note, No,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The numbers are down. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to say that. The numbers are down. Numbers are done.
Speaker 1: And so for anyone listening, what could we do to
Speaker 1: then try to I guess, create that hope and to
Speaker 1: try to change the numbers. You know, it has to
Speaker 1: be a bigger thinking about diversity in general, not just women.
Speaker 1: It has to be people of color, age, different backgrounds,
Speaker 1: including conservative and liberal, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: there is definitely a monoculture there. And another thing I
Speaker 1: always say is that they think it's a meritocracy. It's
Speaker 1: a mirror autocracy, and maybe that's not the best way
Speaker 1: to build these things. The more voices that are involved
Speaker 1: in it, the better for all of us. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: of us, for all of us, because we're the ones
Speaker 1: that use them and this we're the ones affected by them.
Speaker 1: And then of course Congress has to act and do
Speaker 1: something about it, legislate. Biden's made some good moves of
Speaker 1: hiring people like Lena Cohn and some others, but they've
Speaker 1: got it. Congress has aggregated its responsibility here so well.
Speaker 1: And the tech companies continue to say they want to
Speaker 1: be regulated, even though they clearly want to write their
Speaker 1: own regulations. But it is time, I think, for for
Speaker 1: government to take its responsibility and to govern in this way.
Speaker 1: All right, here's a good one. I am very heartened
Speaker 1: by people like Senator Klovich R And Lena Cohn and
Speaker 1: some other women who are at the forefront of this,
Speaker 1: even Elizabeth Warren, who tends to lecture these guys on taxes.
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is the tax system
Speaker 1: is the one. They're just following the rules. Margaret Vestiger
Speaker 1: in Europe. But I think there's a lot of women
Speaker 1: in positions of power that are significantly important. So it's
Speaker 1: really kind of interesting that a lot of women are
Speaker 1: at the lead of this stuff and they're not being cowed.
Speaker 1: They're not yeah, they're not taking their foot off the
Speaker 1: off the pedal, no way, Karen, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for everything, including your time today. Thank you, Chelsea. You
Speaker 1: can find Kara Swisher on social media at Kara Swisher. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In Fact is brought to you by I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: We are produced by a mighty group of women and
Speaker 1: one amazing man, Erica Goodmanson, Mart Harr, Sarah Horowitz, Jessmine Molly,
Speaker 1: and Justin Wright, with help from Lindsay Hoffman, Barry Laurie,
Speaker 1: Joey Sukuban, Julie Supran, Mike Taylor, and Emily Young. Original
Speaker 1: music is by Justin Wright. If you like this episode
Speaker 1: of In Fact, please make sure to subscribe so you
Speaker 1: never miss an episode, and tell your family and friends
Speaker 1: to do the same. If you really want to help
Speaker 1: us out, please leave a review on Apple podcasts,